Time Tracking app: metrics you need to be measuring

The Zendesk Time Tracking app helps support managers gain visibility into the actual time spent across all your customer service interactions within a ticket. The app tracks the time spent on each ticket update, and stores this with the ticket. Using Explore, you can create calculated metrics that contain this information, and use them to produce reports. Use this article to learn how to set up custom time tracking metrics, and produce three sample reports.

Choose the approach

As with any other Support ticket data, there are two approaches for analysing the time tracking app data.

Ticket handling time

The first approach is to look at the handling time per ticket. It can be used to analyse agent performance when the ticket is handled mostly by the same agent and for reporting on time your team spent on supporting specific end-user or organization.

If you choose to go with this approach the best place to create your queries is the Support: Tickets dataset. To do so you can create two simple calculated metrics based on the Total time spent (sec) metric and use them to report on the handling time per ticket alongside the native time metrics.

Metrics that can be created to support this approach are:

Ticket handling time (min)

Ticket handling time (hrs)

Update handling time

The second approach is to look at the handling time per update. It is the best way to report on the agent performance and it is suitable for the complex workflows where the same ticket is handled by multiple agents.

For this approach, the calculated metrics and queries should be created in the Support: Ticket Updates dataset based on the data stored in the Changes - Previous value and Changes - New value attributes. We will be using the NUMBER() function to transform the text attribute values into numbers.

Metrics that can be created to support this approach are:

Update handling time (min)

Update handling time (hrs)

Create the metrics

Note: The time tracking app stores data in custom numeric fields that are synchronized with Explore. If you have installed the Time Tracking app recently, the data required to build necessary calculated metrics might not yet be synced with Explore. This sync occurs once an hour.

Metrics creation steps

Repeat the following general procedure to create each custom metric. Use the metrics configuration sections below to find the information you'll need to create each one.

In Explore, click the query ( ) icon.

In the Queries Library, click New query.

On the Select a dataset page, depending on the metric, select the Support: Tickets or Support: Ticket updates dataset. If you don't see the necessary dataset, see Which datasets use the latest data schema? to identify which dataset to use.

In Query Builder, open the calculations menu (), then click Standard calculated metric.

In the Standard calculated metric menu, enter a name for your custom metric from the list below, for example Update handling time (min).

In the formula box, enter the formula you want from the metrics configuration sections below. If you were creating the Update handling time (min) metric, the Standard calculated metric menu would look like this:

If your user profile language is not in English replace the attribute names in the formula with attributes in your language. For example, in German the formula will look like this:

When you are finished, click Save.

In the Metrics panel of query builder, click Add, find your metric in the Calculated metrics folder, and click the pen icon next to it.

From the Options menu of the Standard calculated metrics page, choose Edit aggregators.

Tip: After you create the metrics, you can change their display format on the Standard calculated metrics page for each metric. To do so, locate the metric in the Calculated metrics folder and click the pen icon next to it. On the Standard calculated metrics page, click Options > Edit display format and choose Custom. For example, you could add the suffix "min" to the Update handling time (min) metric, or increase the number of decimal places on any metric.

Metrics configuration

Metric name: Ticket handling time (min)

This metric should be created in the Support: Tickets dataset. It returns the time spent by agents per ticket, calculated in minutes.

Copy and paste this formula into the formula field of your standard calculated metric:

VALUE(Total time spent (sec))/60

Supported aggregators when you use this metric in a query: SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX, MED

Metric name: Ticket handling time (hrs)

This metric should be created in the Support: Tickets dataset. It returns the time spent by agents per ticket, calculated in hours.

Copy and paste this formula into the formula field of your standard calculated metric:

VALUE(Total time spent (sec))/60/60

Supported aggregators when you use this metric in a query: SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX, MED

Metric name: Update handling time (min)

This metric should be created in the Support: Ticket updates dataset. It returns the time spent by agents per ticket update, calculated in minutes.

Copy and paste this formula into the formula field of your standard calculated metric:

24 Comments

We can not choose thedataset "Support: Ticket Updates". The "Zendesk support" does not have this option too. We can only choose between "Support: Ticket Events" and "Support: Tickets, Users, Organizations". How can we get the right dataset?

It means that there is an issue with the syntax of the metric. Probably you used different metric names but forgot to update the related metric formula according to the names you had set. I will create a ticket for you to check this.

Where (Time Tracking Metric- min) is a placeholder for whichever metric in minute dimensions you want to use. I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for but this is about as close as we can get.

These metrics are displaying aggregated time. How do we go about calculating a metric we can use per agent to show during a specific time period how much time they spent on a ticket? What I mean is, the update handling time may show you the last update this week, but then the total time is showing not the total time this week, but the total time - from all time. How do you fix this? I'm trying to create an agent productivity report showing how much time each agent spent on specific tickets during a week

@Whitney, the handling time is recorded at each agent comment submission. The timer starts counting once the agent accesses the ticket and ends when the update is submitted. So, it is independent of the ticket status field.

@Mark, you can simply slice the SUM(Update handling time) metric by the Updater Name and filter it by the specific time range. So, the report will be very similar to the Example 3 from this article, but you will use the SUM aggregator instead of AVG.

@Paul, If your user profile language is not in English replace the attribute names in the formula with attributes in your language. As well, check if the attributes you need exist in the dataset you are using.

Thanks for creating so many great recipes for us to use! I did want to ask if you could direct/help create a recipe I am looking for. I am interested in Public Comments per Ticket for a specific channel. I would be interested in seeing the average across the channel. Would love to hear if this is possible.

It looks like you're trying to use Example 1 for a use case that it is not intended for. Example 3 is more in line with what you are looking to report on to expose the update handling time spent per Agent.

If you wish to see which Tickets a Trigger fired on you would need to update the Trigger to add a specific data point (such as a Tag) and then report on which Tickets contained that Tag. Trigger usage cannot be reported on in Explore without these changes.

@Harvey

You can report on Public Comments per Ticket by Channel with this configuration using the Ticket Updates Dataset.

Tymeshift is a 3rd party integration so you'll actually want to reach out to them directly to discuss whether it's compatible with Explore or not. You can contact them at the following email address for further assistance: support@tymeshift.com